Category Archives: Calling

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November 11, 2014

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Calling, Community, Faith, General, Liminality, Love, Mission, The Church

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Feathers and Birdseed

I was sitting on an airplane looking over the shoulder of a guy across the aisle. He was perusing one of those SkyMall magazines that offer items for sale you didn’t even know you needed. A fully programmable, food dispensing pet feeder. A toaster that imprints the image of your favorite dog breed right on your morning slice. Or, get this, a skin colored shirt top with faux tattoos printed on it!

Having been a businessman, I certainly appreciate ingenuity and the ability to make a buck. But really, my morning toast needs to affirm my love for my favorite dachshund?

Consumerism, the drive to buy stuff and in so doing provide a certain level of happiness, is killing us. Advertising dollars are solicited and spent at a rate greater than ever. Competition from purveyors of every kind of good or service threatens our own success so we must up the ante to increase market share. Marketing itself has become a finely tuned science and focused to any niche consumer you demand.

The church has succumbed to the same consumeristic mentality reducing many, not all thankfully, to complex business operations to the exclusion, unfortunately, of the original call to make disciples.

Listen to this snippet from the book, AND: The Gathered and Scattered Church, by authors Halter and Smay:

“A consumer is not a disciple and a disciple is not a consumer! Consumerism reflects what Jesus came to call people out of. . . if we look at the amount of time, money, and focus that is spent on providing services for people and the results don’t reflect a fading consumerism in the lives of our people, it’s time to take a walk in the woods and talk to the Head of the church.”

Let’s look at any number of followers of Jesus who we venerate as saints: Paul, any of the apostles, St Francis, Mother Teresa, dozens of un-named, unknown followers of Jesus who gave all and basically had no worldly goods, yet they had their needs provided for. These didn’t seek to accumulate stuff nor did they have stuff but they gave away stuff. They “lost their life;” and “died to self” so they might gain their lives in the Missional directive that Jesus gave when he left us.

Now look at us. Many of us, and the “successful” leaders we have today, have all kinds of resources both organizationally and personally. Many enjoy luxurious homes, recreational times and toys that rival the most affluent in society. Is that wrong? Maybe not. Is that our mission? Likely not. Does that portray our call to die to self in order to live out The Main Thing?

Ninety-nine percent of us are consumers. We want the stuff. We want to be successful in building churches, building our own kingdoms, finding the latest color co-ordinated feathers for our nests and accumulating a bigger flock of birds and more birdseed than the next flock.

Trouble is, Jesus reminded us that every bird has her nest but he didn’t even have a place to lay his head; no home to go to. If we claim to desire to live like Jesus how far are we willing to go? Do we want the power he had, the Spirit he had, the gifts he had but not the life he had? I don’t mean we should all be broke. God has called, blessed and gifted some to provide the means for others to go places and do things in the mission of making disciples, of course, but is that what our resources are primarily dedicated for? Are we mostly givers or consumers? No doubt, when Jesus went away to pray it was at an all-inclusive resort complete with 24 hour restaurant and massage services.

No, none of that is wrong. That is not the point. The question I am addressing is what is right, or what serves my call to the mission of “making disciples?” If I must die to self, as scripture insists, what does that truly look like? Must I never enjoy any comforts? Our affluent society has so enculturated us into consumerism that it is impossible for us to envision any other lifestyle. Are we then to be total, indigent itinerants? No possessions of any kind?

Truly we have been blessed in this country. Several key figures in scripture were wealthy, yes. There were those in the NT who were patrons for the apostles and Jesus who used their resources to fund the apostles and missionary travels. No, wealth is not wrong. The key is how we steward the posession and use of that wealth.

If we can understand that it is a gift from God that still belongs entirely to Him we are starting to grasp the purpose of that wealth. It is to enable us to make disciples, not be or make consumers. The two are incompatible.

Now maybe we can understand the statement quoted earlier in this post: “A consumer is not a disciple and a disciple is not a consumer.”

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November 4, 2014

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Calling, Community, General, Kingdom of God, Love, Mission, Spiritual Growth, Uncategorized

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Goodness, Me?

OK, so how many times a day does someone ask you, “How are you”? And you reply, “Good! You?” I have developed a habit of responding, to some people’s annoyance I’m sure, “I’m well.” Just a quirk of mine and I’ll tell you why. To me, “good” is a value assessment, as in good or evil or somewhere in between. Honestly, I don’t want to go there, so I say that I am well, as in “I’m OK.”

I am not at all being critical of how others respond or trying to change the way they communicate. This is truly my own issue. So maybe you can grasp a little bit how I was jolted awake when I read this conversation in the story Luke recorded.

One day one of the local officials asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to deserve eternal life?” Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? No one is good-only God. (Luke 18:18, 19 MSG)

What?

Wait a minute! Wasn’t Jesus good? Yes, he was God and therefore good but why is this seemingly offhand remark thrown in here?

As always, Jesus never said anything without meaning. He already knew what he was about to point out to this man; that his life had been structured around the doctrine of needing to be good to attain eternal life. He had managed to compartmentalize and distinguish between being good, keeping the rules, and where his love was invested. But it was not placed where it mattered. He had a love of rule keeping, not relationship.

Jesus then asked him about the rules, which the man proudly boasted that he had kept all of his life. Oddly enough, he also seemed to intuit that there was something missing.

Jesus then told him to downsize–to zero.

“This was the last thing the official expected to hear. He was very rich and became terribly sad. He was holding on tight to a lot of things and not about to let them go.” (Luke 18:23 MSG)

The rich man was in love with the stuff and the importance it gave him, the power he could wield because of it and the comfort it afforded him.

Seeing his reaction, Jesus said, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who have it all to enter God’s kingdom? (Luke 18:24 MSG)

The point of all this seems to be again, love. What is my love invested in, things or people? “Good” -ness has nothing to do with getting into the kingdom. Having nothing puts us in a very vulnerable place; that is dependence upon God for everything because there really is little choice. Having a bunch of stuff and power and control gives us options apart from God that are highly tempting and potentially extremely destructive.

I have friends and so do you who are, shall we say, well-funded. God has blessed them with resources so that they may bless those who are need. Several of them are faithful in that responsibility to God and others.

What if all of life wasn’t about being good by keeping the rules? At the end of a life based on this philosophy is a self-centered, self-congratulatory, self-satisfied justification for an existence founded on . . . (wait for it) . . . self.

You see, I may think that the rules are my highest priority and obeying them explicitly my duty and calling. However, since loving God first with heart, soul and mind and then our neighbor like we love ourselves puts our rule-minding a little lower on our totem pole (an appropriate metaphor since a totem is a family or tribal history story pole).

Back to the statement that there is none good but God. Did Jesus mean to infer that he was not “good”? Well, could it be that in the context the young ruler called Jesus good because he truly was basing his value judgment on the fact that Jesus was doing good works; healing, casting out demons, saving people, etc., when in fact it was not because the works were flowing from Jesus’ intrinsic “good-ness” but from God’s goodness.

To the young ruler it may have seemed like these works were performed because of Jesus’ acquired goodness from his ability to keep rules. In fact, since goodness comes only from God, not the ruler’s own abilities, that left him holding the bag. There is no goodness in us.

By giving all his “goods” to others he would be forced away from self-sufficiency into utter dependence on God and His good-ness.

So I guess this is the subtle identity need that presents when I say “I am well.” I indeed may be well. Good . . . well, hopefully someday.

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August 12, 2014

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Calling, General, Kingdom of God, Liminality, Mission, Spiritual Growth

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The Great Re-Quest

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” Helen Keller, The Open Door.

Ever been on an adventure? Remember the beating pulse; the looking forward to some new, as yet unknown thrill? Dictionary.com says an adventure is an exciting or unusual experience. It may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome.

Yes, there is a huge unknown factor that could bring more than surprise or thrills. It could bring notoriety, personal fulfillment, undiscovered knowledge, education or even wealth. Just as potent a possibility is the opposite experience; embarrassment, personal loss, danger, loss of a dream or even death. What is it about the front end of an adventure that quickens us though? You see, unless there were hope of some positive life change in us, we likely would not risk being thought a fool.

I was visiting recently with some close friends who adopted twins. They stood on the liminal threshold of hope for these new family additions presaging a major change in their family rhythm. They trusted that with God’s help and blessing they could provide love, security and care to a pair who never could have hope without someone’s open heart and a hand up. A few years after winning custody and two beautiful, grateful children the adventure still holds challenging, unanswered issues. They, as all of us do, must remind themselves that they embarked on this adventure full of hope, confident of God’s direction and hearts filled with love for two of His dear children. As an observer can only cite what he sees, I must say that I believe this adventure has served to bring them greater faith, dependence on and relationship with God.

A review of my own story places me both in the middle of an adventure and the not yet of a dynamic narrative still to be written. With hope we all advance into tomorrow, the great unknown, possessing only faith that our story will leave a Jesus legacy that includes trusting Him explicitly for the outcome that brings the most glory to Him.

Everything we read and hear about Jesus in His-story involves a dynamic life. Movement, not a static, congealed existence. At the intersection of crisis and a word or touch from Jesus, amazing, super- (beyond or above) natural adventures were manifested. These occurred wherever Jesus travelled and he was gone from home all the time, on his adventure.

“The church should be one of the most adventurous places on earth–the locus of all quest(s), the . . . Jesus community at the very forefront of what God is doing in the world.” Michael Frost; Alan Hirsch, Faith of Leap. They continue; “When we consider the biblical stories that have inspired the people of God throughout the ages, we find that they are stories involving adventures of the spirit in the context of challenge. In fact, that is exactly why they inspire.”

We must be explorers seeking new venues of Spirit activity. We must continually ask questions, for that is our destiny. When Christianity stops its quest because it is satisfied in the security of the known, it will die. The “known” is that qualified, quantifiable, corralled body of predictability that becomes stagnant and spoils; like the manna hoarded by the Israelites on that great forty-year adventure. Leaving the tamed with the timid, we must press forward to undis-covered joys and unrealized experiences on this adventurous quest; a quest of mission, which is our missio Dei.

What adventure lights a fire inside your spirit? Dream a little. Want to tutor some poor kids? Does mentoring men to be great men of The God Adventure and great husbands inspire you? How about joining a skydiving team to share life and Jesus’ love of risk? Get together with a group of senior ladies; listen to their stories and wisdom while you share faith and a skein of yarn. Take some friends with you to help clean up a trashy beach. Doesn’t sound spiritual enough? This generation loves a cause and wants to believe in something greater than petty, polarizing political or spiritual tiffs. They want what they do to matter and make a difference. And, don’t we all?

The adventure begins . . . now get out there, inspire others and really live.

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July 29, 2014

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Calling, General, Kingdom of God, Love, Mission

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Love in the “damned” world

Here’s an interesting question. What motivates your love? I’ll bet you, like me, wouldn’t admit to how shallow we are. No, really! We are attracted to beauty, babies, benevolence, brawn and booty. As we admire, desire and then require we crassly call this response “love”. We love what will feed our craving for recognition, for identity, for stuff, for our need to be needed and our lusts.

No, I’m not stuck on cynical. I remember when lightning struck and I married my “true love”. Maybe your experience was different but I was really clueless about true love at first. I was attracted to her in part as I described above. It was only after we built a history together that we learned to trust each other and love flourished; true love. I can’t imagine my life without her in it.

As Jesus followers, what if our love for others was really true and motivated from a higher ideal? What if our love was inclusive instead of exclusive? What if we returned from the quest for intellectual doctrinal perfection to contemplate and incarnate the love of Jesus to the imperfect and hurting community around us? We have arrogantly assigned ourselves the role of gatekeepers to Jesus’ love by qualifying and un-qualifying folks based on our own checklist. So, what about them? The unlovable, the marginal, the unchurched, the de-churched, those who don’t have their ducks in a row or have any ducks at all?

Then there are those “losers in life’s lottery” we see on the exit ramps; the other end of society. You’ve seen them. The story of their life scrawled on cardboard in two lines with the “God Bless” benediction at the end.

Brian McLaren writes in his book, The Girl with the Dove Tattoo; “God doesn’t just love the ideal world or the perfect world. God loves the damned world, the world full of evil and injustice and prejudice and violence. God’s love doesn’t start with the best and work down. God’s love starts with the worst and works up. God’s love begins with the damned.”

Our culture is so consumed and mind-numbingly satisfied with living vicariously through and with the beautiful people. Celebrity magazines, juicy titillating tidbits of gossip, entertainment shows and all things bizzar-o make up the daily world of too many. Then, when we hear of breakups, breakdowns and behavior that would embarrass animals we “tut-tut” judgmentally from a safe distance with our own finger-wagging, high road morality. In so doing we have abdicated our responsibility to our neighbor.

Brian goes on; “Jesus accepts everyone, just as they are, and then he asks everyone to accept one another, just as they are. That is love, and love is the highest standard of all.” Of course, we know this. But it is human nature for us to try to justify our own actions by pigeonholing others in order to draw attention away from and minimize our own failures.

The unintended consequences of our exclusive religious cultures may have contributed greatly to our maligning, and worse, ignoring others, in their pain. We justify our actions by comparing our fewer, well camouflaged failures, to the very public immoral manifestations by the “elite, effete snobbish” icons of entertainment, religion and politics.

But we keep up our religious activity and agenda. After all, doesn’t being an American Christian promise success in our personal life and love? Isn’t surrendering all to Jesus, forsaking worldly pleasures and enduring until we can move in to our Mansion the sum of life here?

I ask again, myself included. What motivates our love? Does it come from a consumptive drive, or a desire to possess or control someone? Or does it spring from a super-natural source outside of our natural abilities or desires? And really, how could it be true love if the source is rooted in self-centered, ego driven, identity feeding motives?

Happily, more and more followers of Jesus are discovering a better way; a Kingdom way. It has been there all the time. This is people of the book living the book, incarnating Jesus’ love in a culture of injustice, greed, eco-trashing, ethnic and religious polarization. They are preparing the way so His Kingdom can come: and it will come.

What if our love for others sprang from a growing, knowing relationship spring of His love for us? Then the love that flows from us is not ours but God’s pure, refreshing true love.

Does this resonate with you? How do we, as people of The Way, move away from building our own self-serving kingdom to building His? I should love to hear how you are touching those in your space of influence. I can learn from your story. Thank you.

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July 23, 2014

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Calling, Prayer, Spiritual Growth

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Pigs and Prayer

“What if the main object in God’s idea of prayer be the supplying of our great endless need–the need of Himself? . . . Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need: prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer . . . Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner.” George MacDonald

The activity of praying with an under-developed understanding of its purpose usually results in rehearsing a laundry list of our latest or greatest wants. My own prayers have often shown my short-sighted, slippery grasp of the topic. Begging, whining, whimpering and whooping could characterize my various attempts at communicating with the Almighty. God must have a generous sense of humor when He observes our flailing efforts at calling home.

This weekend I visited with a young man who shared some of his story with me. An epiphanal moment for him happened at a retreat in Europe. He had been praying for insight as to how he could love God more. Then it came to him that what God really wanted was to stimulate and grow his understanding of how much God loved him.

The ancient story of a wasteful (the definition of prodigal) son is instructive at this point. He had a problem. After exhausting all visible means of support he woke up to the fact that his menu was reduced to tasteless fiber. His self-sufficient, one-sided efforts at living the good life were his attempts to exercise control and feed his ego. But the business end of pig farming jolted him awake and he suddenly realized his hog wild binge was coming to a squealing stop.

The eye opening that followed was not simply that he felt he deserved at least what the servants at home were allowed. He had gnawing, physical hunger that unless satisfied would result in starvation. It was a hunger so powerful that it drove him to the only sustainable source of life; his father. However, this son needed more than food. He had abdicated his identity as son opting to forge a new identity and history apart from his mentor father. The narrative tells us how that worked out for him. Not well.

A shallow reading might result in the conclusion that this boy was simply hungry and knew he could get a steady meal ticket back home, even if he had to work for it. After all, that’s what he had been doing. But there is more meat in this narraphor.

At home, in the presence of his father, daily provision would be assured. At home he had unlimited access to the wisdom and mentorship of his father. At home security and safety would never have to be his worry. At home the freedom to dance and rejoice in a supportive and loving community was cultivated. But all of these would be secondary to an ultimately vital need: restoring relationship with his Abba.

Prayer for our daily needs is not wrong-headed. Prayer for protection from our enemies is not inappropriate. Jesus modeled a prayer including these requests. But far more emphasis is placed on the relational aspect, “Our Father . . . etc.”

I need Father more than I need food, or a job, or stuff. In my prayers, which are motivated, I must admit, by pressing and immediate needs, I am forced to return to Him. I have “great and precious” promises that assure me I am well cared for. Forgetting that fact providentially drives me to drink. To drink deeply at the source of all that sustains me, Abba.

He can, and does supply all my needs from His rich treasury without my asking for them. He does so just because I am His son. Asking is exercising my faith because the reality is that those needs are already supplied and in transit. So the only purpose I can see in the activity of prayer for our perceived needs, other than soothe our anxiety is that it forces us into communication with Father. Could that be His plan?